Rural waste generation: a geographical survey at local scale

"The paper examines the per capita waste generation rates from from rural areas of Neamț County (Romania) using thematic cartography. Geographical approach of this issue is difficult because the lack of a geostatistic database at commune scale. Spatial analysis of waste indicators reveals several disparities between localities. Comparability of data between communes located in various geographical conditions must be carrefully made according to local waste management systems. Several dysfunctionalities are outlined in order to compare these results, on the one hand, between localities and on the one hand, between recent years. Geographical analysis of waste generation rates is imperative for a proper monitoring of this sector. Data from 2009, 2010 and 2012 shows that rural waste management is in a full process of change towards a more organized, stable and efficient system." (author's abstract

Weighting lower and upper ranks simultaneously through rank-order correlation coefficients

Two new weighted correlation coefficients, that allow to give more weight to the lower and upper ranks simultaneously, are proposed. These indexes were obtained computing the Pearson correlation coefficient with a modified Klotz and modified Mood scores. Under the null hypothesis of independence of the two sets of ranks, the asymptotic distribution of these new coefficients was derived. The exact and approximate quantiles were provided. To illustrate the value of these measures an example, that could mimic several biometrical concerns, is presented. A Monte Carlo simulation study was carried out to compare the performance of these new coefficients with other weighted coefficient, the van der Waerden correlation coefficient, and with two non-weighted indexes, the Spearman and Kendall correlation coefficients. The results show that, if the aim of the study is the detection of correlation or agreement between two sets of ranks, putting emphasis on both lower and upper ranks simultaneously, the use of van der Waerden, signed Klotz and signed Mood rank-order correlation coefficients should be privileged, since they have more power to detect this type of agreement, in particular when the concordance was focused on a lower proportion of extreme ranks. The preference for one of the coefficients should take into account the weight one wants to assign to the extreme ranks.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio